17th-century Chinese coin found in Yukon - North - CBC News
Archeologists have unearthed a coin more than 300 years old northwest of Carmacks, Yukon, which provides a link between 17th-century China, Russian traders and First Nations people.
The find came in July as a team checked the route of a proposed mining road for the Western Copper and Gold Corporation’s planned Casino gold mine.
The Chinese coin, which is round with a square hole in the centre, helps fill in the blanks on some pre-Gold Rush history.
James Mooney, from Ecofor Consulting Ltd., and his team were doing the heritage impact assessment for the proposed mining road.
"I was less than a metre from our archeologist Kirby Booker when she turned over the first shovel of topsoil and I caught sight of something dangling from the turf. It was the coin — the neatest discovery I've ever been part of,” Mooney said.
Mooney believes there’s a logical explanation for how the coin found its way deep into the Yukon interior hundreds of years ago.
“The first documented accounts of foreigners getting into Tlingit territory were in the mid-1700s. Russian traders [were] coming in and they were collecting sea otter pelts and some of the inland furs, and they would trade things like glass beads, silks and coins,” he said.
The find came in July as a team checked the route of a proposed mining road for the Western Copper and Gold Corporation’s planned Casino gold mine.
The Chinese coin, which is round with a square hole in the centre, helps fill in the blanks on some pre-Gold Rush history.
James Mooney, from Ecofor Consulting Ltd., and his team were doing the heritage impact assessment for the proposed mining road.
"I was less than a metre from our archeologist Kirby Booker when she turned over the first shovel of topsoil and I caught sight of something dangling from the turf. It was the coin — the neatest discovery I've ever been part of,” Mooney said.
Mooney believes there’s a logical explanation for how the coin found its way deep into the Yukon interior hundreds of years ago.
“The first documented accounts of foreigners getting into Tlingit territory were in the mid-1700s. Russian traders [were] coming in and they were collecting sea otter pelts and some of the inland furs, and they would trade things like glass beads, silks and coins,” he said.
